(Reuters) <\/p>\n\n\n\n
COLOMBO, Aug 22- Sri Lanka’s cabinet approved issuing free tourist visas to visitors from 35 countries including China, India and Russia, a top official said on Thursday, in an effort to boost tourism and help revive its crisis-hit economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tourists will be given 30-day visas under a six-month pilot programme that will start from Oct. 1, said Cabinet spokesman and Transport Minister Bandula Gunawardana.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The aim of the government is to transform Sri Lanka into a free visa country, much like Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam to tap into the benefits of a rapidly growing tourism industry,” Gunawardana told reporters at a weekly cabinet briefing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The extensive list includes India, China, UK, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Australia, Denmark, Poland, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Nepal, Indonesia, Russia, Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, and France.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The country of 22 million people, famed for its beaches, ancient temples and aromatic tea, saw its tourism industry pummelled first by the COVID-19 pandemic and then by a severe financial crisis in 2022 that saw mass scale protests and shortages of essentials such as fuel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the tourism industry is reaping the benefits of a turnaround that began last year with Sri Lanka clocking nearly 2 million arrivals by mid-August, for the first time since 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The island is expecting to close the year at 2.3 million arrivals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
India is the largest source of tourists with 246,922 arrivals, followed by UK with 123,992, latest data from the Sri Lanka Development Authority showed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sri Lanka earned $1.5 billion from tourism in the first six months of 2024, up from $875 million dollars during the same period last year, according to the central bank.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(Reuters) COLOMBO, Aug 22- Sri Lanka’s cabinet approved issuing free tourist visas to visitors from 35 countries including China, India and Russia, a top official said on Thursday, in an effort to boost tourism and help revive its crisis-hit economy. Tourists will be given 30-day visas under a six-month pilot programme that will start from Oct. 1, said Cabinet spokesman and Transport Minister Bandula Gunawardana. “The aim of the government is to transform Sri Lanka into a free visa country, much like Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam to tap into the benefits of a rapidly growing tourism industry,” Gunawardana told reporters… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41604,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41601"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41603,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41601\/revisions\/41603"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}